Regarding the original topic
: A quick review of my now finished amp.
As explained earlier on this thread, my goal was to build a longlasting, maintainable, modifiable, high-quality stereo amp to act as an amplifier to my multimedia PC. This PC is used for listening music, making music, watching movies and (some) gaming. The main reason I chose to go with the balanced M³ + 2xσ11 design was it’s fairly low build cost and the simplicity of the design. Since I didn’t need too much output power with my PC-setup I was quite convinced the M³ would provide me the high-quality watts I needed. There was a lot of speculation, wether the M³ would be able to stay cool. Well, now I can verify that they can. After several hours of serious listening, I measured the temp of the 2,5” heatsinks, and got 42˚C (that’s about 107˚F), and the PSU sinks keep their temperature below room temp
.
The volume levels I’m getting from my fairly unefficent speakers is more than enough for my medium sized room. The amp is nearly silent when music is off, at least my ear can’t tell wether the amp is on or off if I put my ear against the speaker (the trafos make a REALLY subtle sound. You can hear it if you put your ear against the PSU). I’m using OPA604AP opamps, which, for me, work extremely well. You can definitely separate all the different sounds that are put to the record, just the right amount of bass and although the treble isn’t chiming clear I think it’s also just right. Overall, the sound is quite well balanced.
Movie sounds really come alive with this amp. Yesterday, I watched a very cool (a not yet released
) movie, and I was blown away how incredibly good it sounded! WAAY better than my previous amp!
All in all, I’m more than pleased with this amps performace.
I would like to thank AMB, Beefy and all others @ head-fi.org for helping me out with this project. And a HUGE thanks goes to my friend TJV who has helped me a lot with the casework.
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